Misery

Again that black look of crevasse; the batty darkness under the meadow. Annie Wilkes was gone. The Bourka Bee-Goddess was here.

“You don't want to be smart to me, Paul,” she whispered.

“Well, Annie, one of us has to at least try, and you're not doing a very good job. If you'd just try to see how cr - “

“How many times?”

“Three.”

“The first time to get medication.”

“Yes. Novril capsules.”

“And the second time to get food.”

“That's right.”

“The third time it was to fill up the pitcher.”

“Yes. Annie, I'm so dizzy “You filled it in the bathroom up the hall.”

“Yes - “

“Once for medication, once for food, and once for water.”

“Yes, I told you!” He tried to yell, but what came out was a strengthless croak.

She reached into her skirt pocket again and brought out the butcher knife. Its keen blade glimmered in the brightening morning light. She suddenly twisted to the left and threw the knife. She threw it with the deadly, half-casual grace of a carnival performer. It stuck, quivering, in the plaster below the picture of the Arc de Triomphe.

“I investigated under your mattress a little before I gave you your pre-op shot. I expected to find capsules; the knife was a complete surprise. I almost cut myself. But you didn't put it there, did you?” He didn't reply. His mind was spinning and diving like an out-of-control amusement-park ride. Pre-op shot? Was that what she had said? Pre-op? He was suddenly, utterly sure that she meant to pull the knife from the wall and castrate him with it.

“No, you didn't put it there. You went out once for medication, once for food, and once for water. This knife must have… why, it must have floated in here and slid under there all by itself. Yes, that's what must have happened!” Annie shrieked derisive laughter.

PRE-OP??? Dear God, is that what she said?

“Damn you!” she cried. “God damn you! How many times?”

“All right! All right! I got the knife when I went after the water! I confess! If you think that means I was out any number of times, go on and fill in the blank! If you want it to be five times, it was five. If you want it to be twenty, or fifty, or a hundred, that's what it was. I'll admit it. However many times you think, Annie, that's how many times I was out.” For a moment, in his anger and dopey befuddlement, he had lost sight of the hazy, frightening concept inherent in that phrase pre-op shot. He wanted to tell her so much, wanted to tell her even though he knew that a ravening paranoid like Annie would reject what was so obvious. It had been damp; Scotch tape did not like the damp; in many cases her Ludlumesque little traps had undoubtedly just peeled off and floated away on some random draft. And the rats. With a lot of water in the cellar and the mistress of the manor gone, he had heard them in the walls. Of course. They had the run of the house - and they would be attracted by all the oogy stuff Annie had left around. The rats were probably the gremlins who had broken most of Annie's threads. But she would only push such ideas away. In her mind, he was almost ready to run the New York Marathon.

“Annie… Annie, what did you mean when you said you gave me a pre-op shot?” But Annie was still fixated on the other matter. “I say it was seven,” she said softly. “At least seven. Was it seven?”

“If you want it to be seven, it was seven. What did you mean when you said - “

“I can see you mean to be stubborn,” she said. “I guess fellows like you must get so used to lying for a living that you just can't stop doing it in real life. But that's all right, Paul. Because the principle doesn't change if you were out seven times, or seventy, or seventy times seven. The principle doesn't change, and neither does the response.” He was floating, floating, floating away. He closed his eyes and heard her speak as if from a long distance away… like a supernatural voice from a cloud. Goddess, he thought.

“Have you ever read about the early days at the Kimberley diamond mines, Paul?”

“I wrote the book on that one, he said for no reason at all, and laughed.

(pre-op? pre-op shot?) “Sometimes, the native workers stole diamonds. They wrapped them in leaves and poked them up their rectums. If they got away from the Big Hole without being discovered, they would run. And do you know what the British did to them if they got caught before they could get over Oranjerivier and into Boer country?”

“Killed them, I suppose,” he said, eyes still closed.

“Oh, no! That would have been like junking an expensive car just because of a broken spring. If they caught them they made sure that they could go on working… but they also made sure they would never run again. The operation was called hobbling, Paul, and that is what I'm going to do to you. For my own safety… and yours as well. Believe me, you need to be protected from yourself. Just remember, a little pain and it will be over. Try to hold that thought.” Terror sharp as a gust of wind filled with razor-blades blew through the dope and Paul's eyes flew open. She had risen and now drew the bedclothes down, exposing his twisted legs and bare feet.

“No,” he said. “No… Annie… whatever it is you've got on your mind, we can talk about it, can't we?… please… “ She bent over. When she straightened up she was holding the axe from the shed in one hand and a propane torch in the other. The blade of the axe gleamed. Written on the side of the propane torch was the word Bernz-O-matiC. She bent down again and this time came up with a dark bottle and the box of matches. There was a label on the dark bottle. Written on the label was the word Betadine.

He never forgot these things, these words, these names.

“Annie, no!” he screamed. “Annie, I'll stay right here! I won't even get out of bed! Please! Oh God please don't cut me!”

“It'll be all right,” she said, and her face now had that slack, unplugged look - that look of perplexed vacuity - and before his mind was completely consumed in a forest fire of panic he understood that when this was over, she would have only the vaguest memories of what she had done, as she had only the vaguest memories of killing the children and the old people and the terminal patients and Andrew Pomeroy. After all, this was the woman who, although she'd gotten her cap in 1966, had told him only minutes ago that she had been a nurse for ten years.

She killed Pomeroy with that same axe. I know she did.

He continued to shriek and plead, but his words had become inarticulate babble. He tried to turn over, turn away from her, and his legs cried out. He tried to draw them up, make them less vulnerable less of a target, and his knee screamed.

“Only a minute more, Paul,” she said, and uncapped the Betadine. She poured a brownish-red muck over his left ankle. “Only a minute more and it's over.” She tipped the blade of the axe flat, the tendons standing out in her strong right wrist, and he could see the wink of the amethyst ring she still wore on the pinkie finger of that hand. She poured Betadine on the blade. He could smell it, a doctor's office smell. That smell meant you were going to get a shot.

“Just a little pain, Paul. It won't be bad.” She turned the axe over and splashed the other side of the blade. He could see random flowers of rust blooming on this side before the goop covered it.

“Annie Annie oh Annie please please no please don't Annie I swear to you I'll be good I swear to God I'll be good please give me a chance to be good OH ANNIE PLEASE LET ME BE GOOD - “

“Just a little pain. Then this nasty business will be behind us for good, Paul.” She tossed the open bottle of Betadine over her shoulder, her face blank and empty and yet so unarguably solid; she slid her right hand down the handle of the axe alnost to the steel head. She gripped the handle farther up in her left hand and spread her legs like a logger.

“ANNIE OH PLEASE PLEASE DON'T HURT ME!” Her eyes were mild and drifting. “Don't worry,” she said. “I'm a trained nurse.” The axe came whistling down and buried itself in Paul Sheldon's left leg just above the ankle. Pain exploded up his body in a gigantic bolt. Dark-red blood splattered across her face like Indian war-paint. It splattered the wall. He heard the blade squeal against bone as she wrenched it free. He looked unbelievingly down at himself. The sheet was turning red. He saw his toes wriggling. Then he saw her raising the dripping axe again. Her hair had fallen free of its pins and hung around her blank face.

He tried to pull back in spite of the pain in his leg and knee and realized that his leg was moving but his foot wasn't. All he was doing was widening the axe-slash, making it open like a mouth. He had time enough to realize his foot was now only held on his leg by the meat of his calf before blade came down again, directly into the gash, shear through the rest of his leg and burying itself deep in mattress. Springs boinked and squoinked.

Annie pulled the axe free and tossed it aside absently at the jetting stump for a moment and picked up the box of matches. She lit one. Then she picked up propane torch with the word Bernz-0- matiC on it and twisted the valve on the side. The torch hissed. Blood poured from the place where he no longer was. Annie held the match delicately under the nozzle of the Bernz-0-matiC. There was a floof! sound. A long yellow flame appeared. Annie adjusted it to a hard blue line of fire.

“Can't suture,” she said. “No time. Tourniquet's no good. No central pressure point. Got to (rinse) cauterize.” She bent. Paul screamed as fire splashed over the raw bleeding stump. Smoke drifted up. It smelled sweet. He and his first wife had honeymooned on Maui. There had been a luau. This smell reminded him of the smell of the pig when they brought it out of the pit where it had cooked all day. The pig had been on a stick, sagging, black, falling apart.

The pain was screaming. He was screaming.

“Almost over,” she said, and turned the valve, and now the ground sheet caught fire around the stump that was no longer bleeding, the stump that was as black as the pig's hide had been when they had brought it out of - Eileen had turned away but Paul had watched, fascinated, as they pulled off the pig's crackling skin as easily as you might skim off a sweater after a football game.

“Almost over - “ She turned the torch off. His leg lay in a line of flames with his severed foot wavering beyond it. She bent and now came up with his old friend the yellow floor-bucket. She dumped it over the flames.

He was screaming, screaming. The pain! The goddess! The pain! O Africa!

She stood looking at him, at the darkening, bloody sheets with vague consternation - her face was the face of a woman who hears on her radio that an earthquake has killed ten thousand people in Pakistan or Turkey.

“You'll be all right, Paul,” she said, but her voice was suddenly frightened. Her eyes began to dart aimlessly around as they had when it seemed that the fire of his burning book might get out of control. They suddenly fixed on something, almost with relief. “I'll just get rid of the trash.” She picked up his foot. Its toes were still spasming. She carried it across the room. By the time she got to the door they had stopped moving. He could see a scar on the instep and remembered how he had gotten that, how he had stepped on a piece of bottle when he was just a kid. Had that been at Revere Beach? Yes, he thought it had been. He remembered he had cried and his father had told him it was just a little cut. His father had told him to stop acting like someone had cut his goddam foot off. Annie paused at the door and looked back at Paul, who shrieked and writhed in the charred and blood-soaked bed, his face a deathly fading white.

“Now you're hobbled,” she said, “and don't you blame me. It's your own fault.” She went out.

So did Paul.

23

The cloud was back. Paul dived for it, not caring if the cloud meant death instead of unconsciousness this time. He almost hoped it did. Just… no pain, please. No memories, no pain, no horror, no